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Comment by ecf | Hacker News Reader

Because it’s a task that teenagers are expected to do safely?

Driving as a profession does not require skill.

The kind of driving that teenagers are expected to do is wildly different from trucking. The biggest vehicle I've ever driven was a U-Haul and even that requires more focus and care than regular driving. Add another 25 feet of length, a trailer which can rotate independently of the vehicle, and tight timetables into the mix, and you're certainly looking at more skill than the average driver needs.

Forget eighteen-wheelers, which are rolling geometry problems: ever driven a solid-axle flatbed?

Come back and tell us that that doesn't "require skill".

I learned from a young age how to drive with a trailer, and I have experience with 30ft fifth-wheels.

If it requires no skill, you can do it as well as I (I've never driven either). Wanna bet?

This reminds me of the time when coding was popular among high schoolers and people were saying coding jobs will be 0 as kids will be building mainframes in days.

It turns out its one thing to do a thing for fun or small periods totally a different ball game when you have to do it at scale.

Im guessing a lot of people who can play a chord or two like to imagine it can't be that hard to be a concert musician either.

Everything changes at scale and when it has to be done seriously.

> ....as a profession does not require skill

Some might say the same about gluing together boilerplate in modern development frameworks.

At the end of the day, skill is only relevant for competition within a given industry. The pay scale for any given field is based on the value they provide the employers (which is why grown men playing children's games are paid millions of dollars)

> Driving as a profession does not require skill.

how can say this with a straight face?

Didn't everyone play Euro Truck Simulator (or whatever it was), when it went viral as a daft video game of the year?

I got stuck going round the first corner, then got lost, then gave up when I had to back the trailer into the loading bay.

https://eurotrucksimulator2.com/

Teenagers are not expected to drive 18-wheelers for 12 hours a day.

My dad drove coal trucks from Cleveland to Toledo at 16 in the 70s so yes, some are. Was it fully legal? I doubt it.

If it’s illegal, then it’s not something that’s expected of them.

You live a charmed life.

I think we're talking past each other. I took "expected" to mean "expected by society in general". Teenagers are generally expected to get regular driver's licenses and learn how to drive a car (although many of them don't even do that anymore). It is not common for people to expect a teenager to have a commercial driver's license and know how to operate an 18-wheeler.

Now, is it possible that in the 1970s your dad had an unhinged boss who expected a 16 year old to reliably operate commercial trucks without any training? Is it possible your dad is an exceptional driver who managed to do this? Sure, both of those things are possible. Is it a reasonable thing to expect from any randomly selected teenager? No.

Come back and say this, after you've gotten a CDL Class A

My best friend’s brother in law recently paid a CDL mill to get a license. Took him less than a month.

Miss me with the demanded respect for an industry that will be replaced in a couple decades.

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